Thursday, 17 November 2016

This month's theme is all about "Heartfelt Freedom and Festivities" and the teamies' makes for part two are meant to start the US Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations.

The challenge for our players is an "anything goes" - so don't be shy and play along! You could win a fab $50 voucher to spend at the Emerald Creek store!!!

My latest DT parcel held the fab Emerald Creek "Winter's Mistake" and "Fractured Ice" embossing powders and I knew instantly that I wanted to use them to create an icy and frosty winter scene in a turned around canvas!

This is how the Fractured Ice embossing enamel looks on plain white paper! Amazing, right?

And it also turned some die cut trees that I had first inked with green archival stamping ink into these awesomely spotted green tree line!
The three trees above were also blended with green ink and heat embossed with the Winter's Mistake embossing powder afterwards. I love both effects equally!

The dies I used for cutting the trees were the "Evergreen Trio" die from memory box and the Sizzix On the Edge "Tree Line" die. The snowflakes were die cut using the lawn fawn "Mini Snowflakes" die.

The canvas frame was first painted with whiteDecoArt mediaGesso and then given a coat of DecoArt media white Modeling Paste. I stamped into the modeling paste using some gorgeous stamps from Christmas stamp sets designed by Tim Holtz.

Once that had dried I applied several washes of DecoArt media fluid acrylic "Viridian" and dry brushed everything with white Gesso to highlight the raised areas - this way the texture from the stamped images and palette knife became more visible.

I also added some Winter's Mistake and Fractured Ice embossing enamels here and there.

The background inside the canvas was painted with white Gesso first and then given a thin layer of DecoArt media white Crackle Paste. I used the same "Viridian" wash to blend in the background with the frame and make the cracks more visible.

The die cut snowflakes and the metal charm snowflakes were heat embossed with Fractured Ice, Winter's Mistake and Hammered Metal embossing powders too. I wound some wire around the charms' loops and inserted them into some holes I had poked into the canvas frame.

Then I stacked my tree lines using sticky foam pads, glued on the heat embossed snowflakes and tied the metal band charm to the bottom of the canvas using thin rough string.

Done!

I hope you like my frosty little winter scene and are inspired to create your own! It surely was inspired by the enchanting and gorgeous winter-themed shadow boxes my wonderful and talented friend Kerstin from Scrapbook Dreams always creates! She is the master of textures with frosty bling and story telling and I will never even get close to the magic she creates in her makes!

And don't forget to check out my teamies' makes too! I promise you will love what you see when you hop over to Emerald Creek Dares! And don't forget to play along!!! I hope to see you over there soon!

The background was taken from an old and beautifully messy sheet of paper that I used to protect my workdesk with while painting MDF parts and other alterable bits 'n pieces.

It was crumpled and torn in some spots, but honestly that is something I count as a bonus when it comes to creating texture and visual depth. All I had to do is create an ATC format sized "finder" (from paper) to move over my stained paper to find the most beautiful spots.

I glued them to some Calico Craft Parts mixed media greyboard ATC blanks using matte Decou-Page. Then I browsed my stencils and chose some of Andy Skinner's and Tim Holtz's. I applied black archival stamping ink through them with a piece of cut 'n dry foam. Afterwards I outlined the black shapes with a white gel pen (one of the great things I learned from Seth Apter via one of his fab online classes ;).

Then I gave my ATCs a thorough coat of DecoArt media Satin Varnish. That does not only protect the glued on paper but also is of great help when you want to remove a stamped on image that you aren't as content with as you had thought you would be (as you can simply wipe it off while it is still wet) ;)

I hope you like my industrial ATC trio! I would also like to invite you over to our challenge blog to check out the makes of my fab teamies...and maybe also play along!!! That would be great!

Monday, 14 November 2016

As usual on a Monday this is a short invite over to the Calico Craft Parts blog, where I am sharing a project that is meant to capture everything (well - almost) I love about autumn. Winter is almost here and everything is cold and grey already so a bit of warmth was something I needed ;)

I am also sharing a simple and cheap technique on how to create this heavily textural rust like look. (*wink wink).